Countrywide campaign promoting women’s economic empowerment launches in Kutaisi
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UN Women has kicked off a countrywide campaign promoting women’s economic empowerment in Georgia in collaboration with the Business Leaders’ Federation “Women for Tomorrow”.
With the slogan “Empower your business through women’s empowerment!”, the campaign launched in Kutaisi on 30 and 31 March with a two-day forum promoting women’s economic rights and opportunities.
The forum highlighted the role of business organizations in women’s empowerment, showcasing inspirational role models: entrepreneur women, women from certain business organizations who have benefited from gender sensitive workplace practices, girl students in ICT and female farmers from the mountainous regions of Georgia. The forum provided information on the training, grant and education opportunities available for women and girls. The guests of the forum had a chance to attend various inspirational and awareness-raising events, masterclasses on coaching and information stands organized within the forum, among which was the female entrepreneurs’ trade fair. In total, 29 women startuppers participated in the fair, presenting their products in the city of Kutaisi. The forum closed with an electronic music performance hosted by a group of young female composers from Tbilisi.
Forum attendee Liliana Maisuradze founder of the accessory workshop “Edena”, remarked: “It has been a wonderful opportunity for a startupper and entrepreneur woman like me to participate in such a forum. I run my business in the mountainous part of Racha. In these two days, I managed to attend various masterclasses and information sessions. I am going back to my village with lots of useful information to grow my business.”
The campaign and respective forum offered a great opportunity to further promote the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) developed by UN Women and the UN Global Compact in 2010 to guide businesses on how to empower women in the workplace, marketplace and community. UN Women plans to organize two more forums of such kind in Batumi and Zugdidi in summer 2019. The forum was conducted in the framework of the project “A Joint Action for Women’s Economic Empowerment”, financially supported by the Government of Norway.